


Find The River

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Musical References, R.E.M. - Freeform, Skinny Dipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2018-02-12 21:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2125239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I just thought that Will Graham would really like R.E.M., so I wrote a fic about it. Hannibal and Will also get up to some stuff. Hope you enjoy. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find The River

I am going to be straight-up with you guys, because you’re my peeps and I love you. This fic is probably not going to be very enjoyable unless you are familiar with R.E.M.’s music, at least up through _Automatic For The People_. But if you want to give it a try anyway, I would recommend familiarizing yourself at least with “Nightswimming,” which is the emotional center of the story. [You can (re-)listen to it here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-YHU6BwPR0). 

And here is every other song mentioned in the fic. Maybe have a listen before you Begin the Begin (*sigh*, that’s an R.E.M. joke):

[Cuyahoga](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7K3CUd1VU4)  
[Radio Free Europe](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXUkddrnsXQ)  
[Finest Worksong](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=559eWB93jW4)  
[Driver 8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OSG7YQBKCE)  
[Find The River](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOXOo8gOLTc)  
[Ignoreland](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOXOo8gOLTc)  
[Everybody Hurts](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijZRCIrTgQc)  
[New Orleans Instrumental No. 1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7K3CUd1VU4)

 

**1.**

 

Will had bought his house in Wolf Trap with the full understanding that his commute would demand two and a half hours out of each day. To him it was worth it, to have that distance between work and home, to enjoy a peace and solitude which could only be attained when one lived that remotely.

But on top of his commute, these days Will was spending even more time on the road, making twice-(or more)weekly forays to Baltimore, to have conversations with Hannibal Lecter. Quantico, Baltimore, and Wolf Trap were about equidistant – a little more than an hour’s drive between any two of them. And he often had errands to run – groceries, bank, the vet. It added up, but he still didn’t mind. He liked driving.

Navigating the same roads every day did not take much concentration, so in the car he tended to devote a significant portion of his brain power to listening to music. He had a CD wallet under the seat which held three dozen discs, but the albums he had on heavy rotation were all on a sleeve on the driver’s side visor, and they were all R.E.M.

Will was fourteen years old when _Document_ was released, a typical age at which one begins listening to college radio, because one has likely just discovered that everything around oneself is phony, bland, and “commercial.” And Will wasn’t so different.

After discovering _Document_ , he spent the next six months or so setting aside money here and there and eventually acquired all of R.E.M.’s previous albums. He bought them on tape, to be played on his cheap portable cassette player. His and his father’s itinerant existence made it hard to have a place to keep a stereo and LPs, and in those days he couldn’t imagine being able to afford a CD player.

R.E.M. had an energy that was emotional and pensive, but they could not be accused of being sanctimonious or – that most stigmatizing of all labels when you were a teenage boy into pop music – “for girls.” But in those days, Will was not able to articulate this, or explain in any other way just what it was that appealed to him so much about the band. He just liked what he liked.

But it was that energy, that intangible “it” that the band possessed, that spoke to his adolescent turmoil. It certainly couldn’t have been the lyrics, because he could hardly discern them. In those early albums, the band chose not to include lyric sheets, and Michael Stipe’s foggy delivery and Mike Mills’ airy backing vocals meant that for years, most of the lyrics eluded Will. And even when he made a point to pay close attention to the verses, those words that he could understand – interspersed between the growling and mumbling – were for some reason unmemorable. Not mediocre, just full of complex themes and knotty imagery. _I saw a treehouse on the outskirts of a farm / The power lines have floaters so the airplanes won’t get snagged_ was beguiling to read on paper, like a Raymond Carver story, but set to music it just did not get immediately burned into your memory, the way something would such as, say, _Her name is Rio and she dances in the sand_.

But in those days, just as he did now in the car, Will could happily holler along with the lengthy vowels of the choruses: _Cuyahoooooooooga_ … _Radiooooooo freeeeee Europe_ … _Your fiiiinest hoooooooouuuuuuuuur_ … No other vocals could squeeze his heart the same way, not Bono’s earnest yodeling, not Morrissey’s morose lilt, not Sting’s reggae-esque yelping.

The years went by, Will grew up, and R.E.M.’s status moved from “college radio band” to “alternative legends” to “elder statesmen.” Will wasn’t in the habit of reading think-pieces in _Rolling Stone_ , so he was only vaguely aware of how the perception of the band changed; he mainly cared whether he liked a song or album, or didn’t, but he was absolutely aware of how the music changed from _Green_ to _Out of Time_ to _Automatic For the People_. He noticed the new crystal-clarity in the lyrics – lyrics which were not at all objectionable, but which tied the songs down, directed your thoughts. The energy which had been free-floating in the 80’s now whooshed down specific corridors of feeling, and often Will was happy to be swept along, but sometimes not so much.

He continued to buy each new album through the 90’s, until he finally understood that the magic of those early records was never coming back. He still held onto what he’d bought – he may have been the only person on Earth whose copy of _Monster_ was still on his shelf, and not gathering dust in some used record store’s bargain bin – but he understood that nothing was going to supplant the force of _Life’s Rich Pageant_ or _Fables of the Reconstruction_ in his psyche, and he was getting to the age where he was losing interest in making the effort to find such a record, anyway.

 _Automatic For The People_ had sat undisturbed on his shelf for ten years, and then one day he elected to put it into rotation in his car. That night, driving home, he had paid close attention to the lyrics, and a minute and a half into “Nightswimming,” he had to pull over to the side of the highway and cry uncontrollably for his unrecoverable youth, a subject which he had not given any thought to as an adult prior to that moment. Never before had he cursed the lyrical clarity of those later albums. Never before had it occurred to him that the reason he’d sometimes eschewed Michael Stipe’s new, precisely articulated lyrical stances was because he was twelve years younger, and had not yet attained the life experience that might allow him to appreciate them.

But possibly the saddest part about the whole thing was that he wasn’t, as Stipe was, crying about a carefree youth that he was unable to reclaim – because Will never had a carefree youth in the first place. There had been no nights like these for Will, sneaking out to go skinny-dipping with friends, everyone outwardly blithe and wild, and at the same time confused and anxious and ready to burst with sexual curiosity.

Will was always in the boatyards with his father, occupying his time with exploring and using his imagination until he reached the age where he could learn the work himself. He wasn’t a Tulane legacy, like those sons and daughters of the people whose boat motors his father fixed. When his own afternoons of manual labor were over, and his father had drunk himself to sleep in the recliner, Will studied, determined to rein in his idiosyncratic brain and use it to free himself from crushing poverty.

Will had no fond memories of his youth to look back upon with wistful longing. Perhaps that was why he cried. This thing that others once had, and boo-hooed about because they had lost, he had never come close to having. And his chance was gone; he would never have it. If he tried for it, if he were somehow able to cast off his self-consciousness and seek out those youthful pleasures at his age, he would look like a fool, and rightly so, because he would be one. He was old now, and he was only going to get older.

After “Nightswimming” came the gentle final track, a pastoral little apology for its predecessor: _We’re sorry we just gave you that heartbreaking reminder of your own mortality, so here’s a little ditty to remind you that it’s really not so bad, that you must persevere, because good things await you. Probably_.

 

 

**2.**

 

Without hesitation, Hannibal dropped into the passenger’s seat of Will’s station wagon and buckled himself in. Will would have thought that Hannibal would feel just as uncomfortable in his grubby car as he had felt riding in Hannibal’s pristine Bentley, but Hannibal did not betray a hint of awkwardness.

“I can give you a ride in the morning, too, if you need one,” Will said. “I don’t think you’ll be able to rent a car at this hour.”

“That won’t be necessary. Once I get home, I can hire a car when I need to, until I hear from the dealership. This is already going to be a lot of driving for you.”

“I don’t mind. And anyway, I can’t just leave y--” Will’s voice was drowned out when he turned the key in the ignition; his music came on immediately, the speakers blaring _Automatic_ ’s screamiest and least accessible track, “Ignoreland.”

“Oh God, sorry, sorry.” He fumbled for the volume dial, yanking it all the way to the left to switch the radio off. “I always listen to music in the car, and I almost never have anyone with me, so I just…leave it on…”

“It’s alright,” Hannibal said. “I don’t mind if you have it on while we drive, if you prefer it.”

Will gave him a brief, dubious look, but twisted the knob back slightly to the right, until the music was at a reasonable level. He didn’t want to go through the rigmarole of pulling out an album that Hannibal might find more tolerable, so he just clicked back through the CD until he reached what he thought was a good spot. He didn’t go back as far as “Everybody Hurts” – that song had achieved Overplayed Cheeseball status the week it came out – but he let it go from “New Orleans Instrumental No. 1,” thinking that Hannibal would loathe that track least of all.

For ten minutes, neither of them said a word. The winding highway stretched in front of them, but it was pitch-dark, so there was little to see. They listened to the music and kept to their own thoughts. Only once did they encounter another vehicle coming from the other direction. Will resisted the urge to speed, kept a careful eye out for wandering deer. It was another sixty miles to Baltimore.

“Are you sure the music’s okay?” Will said.

“I have never been inclined towards the syncopated sensibilities of rock music,” Hannibal replied, “but admittedly I have rarely sought to look beyond the genre’s surface reputation. I’m grateful for the opportunity you’ve given me, as this band has a dimension to it that goes beyond anthemic pseudointellectualism. They are as blatantly Southern Gothic as a Flannery O’Connor novel.”

Will was so surprised by this statement, his pulse sped up. “You know, I never thought of it that way before. But yeah, they’re from Georgia, so I guess they’d know as much as anyone about the weird, old South. Maybe that’s why I…why it’s always felt so…huh.” He fell back into silence, not wanting to push his luck by relating his whole history with the band to Hannibal. He’d probably attach far more significance to it than it deserved.

When he heard the understated, sentimental piano of “Nightswimming,” Will reached out reflexively and pressed the button to take the CD to the next track.

“Why did you do that?” Hannibal asked.

“I can’t listen to that song in the car. It’s…distracting.”

“It sounded quite lovely for a moment. What is distracting about it?

“The last time I listened to it, I, uh, I cried. I can’t be doing that in the car all the time. So I’ve skipped over it ever since.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“What, me crying?”

“The song. I would like to hear what has such a powerful effect on your emotions.”

Was this a battle Will wanted to fight right now? Would digging his heels in about the song prompt Hannibal to ask questions that would pry even deeper? Every morsel of information that Hannibal had ever wanted from Will, he got, inevitably. Will sighed and pointed vaguely toward the side of the highway, saying, “Alright, just let me…”

When he found a suitable place – a wide gravelly patch between the road and the woods – he pulled over and tracked back to “Nightswimming.” The song’s lyrics were clearly intelligible and easily interpreted. Will’s reaction to the song was not as strong as it had been the last time, but he had to work very hard to keep still and not cringe through it, knowing that Hannibal was listening intently and pondering.

When the song ended, Will flipped the visor down to blindly grab another CD to continue with. He said, “Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“Will, do you know where we are right now?”

“Uh, I think we’re somewhere outside of Woodbridge?”

Hannibal gestured to his right, towards the woods. “Do you know what’s right over there?”

After a few moments of thought, Will realized that he did. “No,” he said, “you can’t be thinking what I _think_ you’re thinking right now.”

“It’s a beautiful night. And almost a full moon.”

Will’s heart raced. The image that the song put in his head, the imaginary fun that he never got to have – he had that image in his head still, only now, having heard Hannibal’s suggestion, it wasn’t four or five whooping, frolicking youths that he pictured, it was two grown men, and that was wrong, that was not how this situation was supposed to play out. He was supposed to go on with his dark, stupid life, and very occasionally lament what he never had. That was all there was to it, and Will had made his peace with that.

Hannibal unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door. He got out of the car, then bent down to look back inside at Will, as if to say, _Well?_

“This cannot be happening,” Will muttered, as he unbuckled his own seat belt.

As he followed Hannibal out of the car and across the grass, he was relieved at first to see that not too far into the woods stood a six-foot-high chain link fence. But Hannibal quickly made it clear that Will was a fool if he believed that such an obstacle would thwart his plan. Seemingly without a care for his fine clothes or shoes, Hannibal dug one toe between the links, and hoisted himself up and over the fence.

“If there’s a fence,” Will suggested, “there must be a gate.”

“The gate will be locked,” Hannibal said with a soft grunt as he hit the ground on the other side.

“Maybe that’s a sign that we shouldn’t be trying to get inside.”

“I doubt that it stops the university students.” Hannibal was just standing there now, on the other side, waiting for Will to join him. “Do you need my help?” he asked.

“No, I don’t need your help,” Will said, narrowing his eyes at Hannibal as he approached the fence. He even managed to climb over with more finesse than Hannibal had.

Hannibal moved through the woods with confidence, and Will followed closely behind, trusting his sure-footed lead. They didn’t have to travel far before the chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs was joined by another sound – the slow coursing of the river. The trees ended at a pristine sandy bank, beyond which the water flowed wide and peaceful.

Will stood on the bank and watched the moonlight sparkling on its surface. From behind him, he heard a rustle of fabric, and when he turned, Hannibal had his jacket off and was setting it, neatly folded, on a flat rock nearby. Perfectly aware that Will’s eyes were on him, displaying not a hint of shyness or hesitation, he unbuttoned and shrugged off his waistcoat, then undid the buttons on his cuffs. “Aren’t you going to join me?” he said. He worked his way down the buttons on the front of his shirt.

Will’s heart swelled, not at the sight of Hannibal’s bare skin, but at the mischief he saw in Hannibal’s eyes. God, they might get caught. They could get fucking caught out here, two respectable middle-aged men reduced to naked, giggling trespassers. This was not the pathetic imitation that Will had contemplated and rejected. This was real. He was wide awake and flushed with excitement in the middle of a warm summer night, and he had willingly been led to the water’s edge by a fearless friend with a taste for adventure.

Without taking his eyes off of Hannibal, Will began to unbutton his own shirt.

 

 


End file.
